OVERVIEW: The New World Foundation supports organizations that increase community resilience to climate change.

IP TAKE: This funder’s climate change related giving is fairly broad, but it ultimately seeks to reverse the impact of fossil fuel use.

PROFILE: When Anita McCormick Blaine chartered the New World Foundation (NWF) in 1954, she already had a long history of progressive philanthropy. For example, she supported desegregation and efforts to further civil rights in the south. Since McCormick Blaine passed, her granddaughter, Anne Blaine Harrison, has continued McCormick Blaine’s philanthropic wishes and strategies. Today the foundation works to “support leaders and organizations that advance democracy, protect communities and build a humane social vision.” NWF’s grantmaking includes the New Majority Fund, Phoenix Fund, the Climate Action Fund, investing in youth, and through its resource lab, offering economic stimulus packages for community organizations.

NWF’s Climate Action Fund awards grants to organizations that “aim to reverse the devastating impact on society’s dependence on fossil fuels.” The program’s approach addresses climate change’s affect on the overlap between economics, health, energy, and the environment. Among other areas, the program funds projects and programs related to toxic cleanups, activists concerned with rising asthma rates, Unions demanding increased workplace safety, Native Americans fighting for land rights, farmworkers concerned with the dangers of pesticides, combatting mountain removal coal mining, and stopping fracking.